Scripting Civil Partnerships: interviewing couples together and apart

Abstract

Couple studies generally focus on heterosexual relationships where partners are interviewed together or apart. This article discusses a study of same-sex couples’ Civil Partnerships that interviewed partners together and apart. It considers the methodological and analytical challenges raised by our approach by discussing how the different interactional settings of the interviews shaped the stories that couples and partners told, the links between relationship narration in interviews and their ‘doing’ in practice and the insights generated into the sociocultural factors that shape relationship scripting. The joint interviews produced couple and marriage stories. They illuminated couples’ scripting agency and factors that enable and constrain partners’ scripting authority in interviews and beyond. The individual interviews produced biographically embedded narratives of ‘relating selves’. These contextualized and complicated couple stories of (non-)negotiated relationships. Our approach enabled us to make links between relational scripting in interviews and the flow of power in situated research, relational and sociocultural contexts.

Ethical considerations when conducting joint interviews with close relatives or family: an integrative review

“…Some challenges in JIs seem to be somewhat similar to what can happen in a focus group interview such as; the problem with imbalance during interview when one part dominates the other gender unevenness or differing expectations from the interview session towards both the possibility to express individual and shared accounts and the aim of the study ; but the consequences on the balanced ‘give and take’ relationship between relatives could be somewhat different . Sandelowski found it more feasible to gather men's accounts about family matters when conducting JIs opposed to individual interviewing.…”

“…When memories are jogged between participants, the challenge about revitalizing suppressed memories arises in JIs. However, some participants feel more relaxed about ‘anonymity’ and revealing secrets when both of them are present . This might partially explain why some participants feel insecure if they are separated .…”

Un/doing Chrononormativity: Negotiating Ageing, Gender and Sexuality in Organizational Life

“…this meant devising methods of data collection and analysis that facilitated an 'undoing', in Butler's (2004) terms, of what Heaphy and Einarsdottir (2012) describe as the 'scripting' of our sexual selves, encouraging participants to reflect on the performative processes at stake in sustaining socially recognizable, seemingly coherent narratives of their organizational selves. Drawing on Butler we can understand these experiences in terms of the dynamics of desire and recognition, articulated in our participants accounts of 'undoing chrononormativity', through their sense of relative freedom from constraint, whilst at the same time as themselves being 'undone' by its negating effects.…”

Holistic Experiences and Strategies for Conducting Research With Couples

“…Individual interviews offered space to share personal experiences without censure from partners (Allan, 1980;Beitin, 2008;Heaphy & Einarsdottir, 2012), but discussing similar topics with two participants separately often generated different accounts in both studies. Participants also discussed issues their partner did not mention.…”

“…For example, Eisikovits and Koren (2010) explained their approach to combining individual interviews and dyadic analysis, which enabled them to study "the partners' individual perceptions and understandings, while taking into account the context of their joint life to understand the essence of their experience" (p. 1645). Heaphy and Einarsdottir (2012) offer additional insights by exploring the corresponding switch between scripting 'the couple' and scripting a 'relational self ' (p. 63).…”